Title: 13 Treasures
Author: Michelle Harrison [website] [twitter]
Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy
Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Source: Provided by Publisher
Parental Warning: none

“The bedroom door closed, leaving her in darkness.  Tanya lay back on her bed, too shocked even to cry. The look on her mother’s face had said it all.  How many times had she been warned, how many times had she been told about the so-called last straw?  Because now, as she listened to the muffled sobbing from the room across the landing, she knew that tonight really had been the last straw for her mother.”

Summary:
Tanya is haunted, or so she thinks. Tormented by creatures in the night she is branded a troublemaker by her mother and shipped off to her grandmother’s remote manor house.  This decision, a fate worse than death in her mind leads Tanya down the path of doing her best to convince her mother to change her mind.  Sadly, she is unsuccessful and is promptly dropped off in Tickey End and left behind in a creep old house with a cadre of strange relatives.

Cousin Fabian is a brainiac intent on mocking her every move, Uncle Warwick is a strange watch dog that thwarts her every attempt at exploring the woods surrounding the house, and her grandmother Florence who didn’t seem to want to anything at all to do with her presence in any capacity.  Tanya, it seemed, was more a burden and nuisance than anything else.

Attempting to make the best of a bad situation, over time, Tanya makes the effort to fit in with those she is living with.  Her relationship with her cousin in particular thaws as the two bond over a common curiosity surrounding a series of odd occurrences in and around Tickey End and the land about the manor in which they live.  Having come face to face with several random characters they are both convinced that something mystical must be happening.

Not new to the idea of magic and faery creatures Tanya does her best to help Fabian adjust to the revelations he faces both about the land they live on and the family they are part of.  With the help of a band of odd balls the two set out on an adventure to save the seemingly unsavable.

Opinion:
A fabulous read for middle graders interested in faery tales and fantasy.  Not too heavy on either, the mystical history created by Harrison was both realistic and understated.  Often times, in my experience, and author gets so drawn into the creation of the other-worldly aspects of this type of story that it can tend to overwhelm.  Not so in the case of 13 Treasures.  The back story here is light on the faery-land and heavy on the character building.  This is not to say that we don’t see the world they live in because to some degree we do, just not at the expense of the events of the world that Tanya and her family are a part of.

The story itself was equally interesting.  At three-hundred and fifty pages it wasn’t short (particularly, I imagine, for some middle grade readers) but at no time did the story lag or become so repetitive in nature that I found myself thinking “man she could have cut out those two chapters”. It had a bevy of fantastic characters including the main heroine Tanya. Spunky, defiant and true to herself she was the picture of endurance and patience as she did her best to solve the mystery presented as it unfurled.  Furthermore, her foe Morewenna was just the right combination of maniacally evil and manipulative.  Using creatures from another realm in consort with magic she plotted against Tanya and her family in a way that wasn’t remotely over the top given the subject matter of the story.

To delve deeper into the story and characters would only serve to ruin the fun twists and turns of the story for the reader so I will leave you with this….

This book is bound to keep your middle grader’s attention, moreover it’s great fun for the young adult reader as well.  If you are looking for a good book to segue into the realm of fantasy 13 Treasures would certainly be well worth your attention.